


Testing

by ssrhpurgatory



Series: Inappropriate fucking in a lab environment [1]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: (technically) - Freeform, F/M, Magical Bond, Mutual Pining, Pre-Canon, Sex Pollen, inappropriate fucking in a lab environment, middle aged disasters having sex and avoiding feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-12
Updated: 2018-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:55:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 10,616
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23119588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssrhpurgatory/pseuds/ssrhpurgatory
Summary: A test on a foreign compound that came back from one of Goddard's deep-space outposts goes... a little awry. And results in Alexander Hilbert (in the guise of a truly awful 90s alias, Karl Kelley) having sex with his lab manager. In his lab. Like you do.Originally written 2019-2020; backdated to hopefully take it out of current works.
Relationships: Alexander Hilbert/Original Female Character(s)
Series: Inappropriate fucking in a lab environment [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1661833
Kudos: 3





	1. Chapter 1

Karl’s lab techs had been conscripted by one of the other scientists in his group for the week, helping out with a high-priority project. This normally would not have been a problem, but, as he set up for a series of experiments on a sample of a foreign compound that had come back from one of Goddard’s deep space missions, he realized that he had relied on his techs’ expertise with some of the shiny new lab equipment that he had not encountered before coming to work at Goddard Futuristics. Some of which would make it significantly easier to do the project currently at hand… at least, if he could figure out how to make it do what he needed it to do.

Well. It was a long shot that she would be free, but when Rosemary had shown him his lab the first time, she had offered to come help him with the equipment he was unfamiliar with. He went to the phone on the lab wall and dialed her office number.

“Epps,” came her voice, curt against his ear.

“Ah. Yes. Rosemary,” said Karl, not sure where to start.

“Dr. Kelley,” she said, her voice warming. “What can I help you with?”

“I am sure you know that my techs are working with Dr. Gao this week?” Rosemary made a little noise of acknowledgement, and he continued. “Well, it turns out that I do not know how some of this equipment works quite as well as I ought…”

“…and that little chemistry project I sent your way would take half as long with the right tools for the job,” Rosemary finished for him. “My afternoon is free. I'll forward my phone to Charles so he can get in touch with me if there are any emergencies and head your way.”

There was a click and she hung up, and Karl continued setting up the bits of equipment that he did know how to cope with. The scientist who had sent the sample back for further testing had said only that it modified human behavior and had been vague on specifics, even when she had been followed up with several times. Karl was trying to break it down into its base chemical components and figure out what receptors in the brain it effected to get some idea of what behavioral changes the scientist might have been alluding to. A minor bit of testing that would not usually have gone to him were it not for the fact that the lab’s xenobiologist, Dr. Weiss, was currently out on medical leave.

Ten minutes later, Rosemary appeared at the door to his lab, her normal suit jacket replaced with a thick plastic smock and a pair of goggles hanging around her neck. “It's been a bit since I've played lab tech for a chemistry project,” she said, a big grin on her face. “Shall we get going?”

With Rosemary’s help, the rest of the samples were set up for testing in what Karl thought was a quarter of the time it would have taken him on his own, and he had been given a primer on the machinery he was unfamiliar with.

“Now, will that do you, or…?”

“I would really rather have someone who knows what they are doing on hand,” Karl said, sounding guilty even to his own ear.

Rosemary gave him a little smile even as she clucked her tongue disapprovingly at him. “Let me check in with Charles. I can probably stay a little longer, but you have to promise me you'll sit down with the manuals over the weekend. And that you'll pay attention and ask questions the next time one of your techs uses something you're unfamiliar with.”

“I promise,” Karl said, his rush of gratitude making itself heard in his voice. He watched her, smiling fondly, as she crossed the room to the lab phone and called up her assistant.He had only known her for a few months, a little over half a year, and her cheery personality was only a thin disguise for the giant bitch she contained within… but he liked her, all the same. He suspected, of course, that she reported his every move to her higher-ups, but when push came to shove, he suspected just as strongly that she would be on his side, not theirs. At least she would be on his side on the subject of the autonomy of his lab, which was where it really mattered.

Rosemary returned to his side, beaming a bright smile his way, and Karl’s breath caught in his throat. “Charles said there haven't been any violent uprisings against my despotic rule since I came up here and he didn't sense any brewing, so barring any emergencies in my other labs I'm yours for the next few hours,” she said cheerily.

Karl let out a little laugh at that. She seemed to enjoy being deliberately ridiculous at times, and despite himself he enjoyed her forays into the ridiculous quite a bit. At the very least, he often gained new idioms in English out of them, though sometimes he wondered how many were in actual use and how many were flights of fancy from Rosemary’s mind.

Right now she was examining some of the samples they had set up to try and figure out if it was possible to get the compound into solution. She made an approving noise and held up a couple of the test tubes. “Hello. These look promising. Now, Dr. Kelley, if you'll follow me…”

Half an hour later they were back to waiting. They were both leaning against one of the tall tables in the lab, Karl standing, Rosemary perched on a stool, feet in their heels propped up on the rungs of another, legs crossed.

“So. Talk to me,” she said. “You made any progress getting to know your coworkers?”

Ah. “Well, I see Aditi and Tomas most days…”

Rosemary shot him a sharp look. “Not what I meant. And seeing your lab techs doesn't mean you interact with them socially, you know.”

Karl shrugged. “I went for drinks once. Dr. Weiss invited me. But I felt very much as if I was getting… ah, what is phrase? When every conversation you try to enter comes to abrupt halt.”

“They were giving you the cold shoulder,” Rosemary said, frowning. “Honestly. It's like taking care of a bunch of children. You'd think they'd know by now not to judge you too harshly by the actions of your country.”

“Is that why?” Karl said, examining the floor.

He saw Rosemary shrug out of the corner of his eye. “Best as I can tell, yes.” She sighed. “I'll have to have a talk with a few of them,” she muttered irritably.

“Please do not,” he said, looking sidelong at her. “Surely this is the sort of thing you should be able to rely on us to sort out like adults.”

Rosemary shot him another sharp look. “You would think so, but here I am, having to act the part of preschool teacher on a weekly basis…”

One of the machines on the other side of the room dinged, and they crossed the room to examine it.

“Hm, looks like there might be a bit of a pressure buildup in the chamber. Let me just—doctor!”

A cloud of steam emerged from the compartment door Karl had just opened, leaving them both coughing. Karl slammed the door shut and Rosemary dove for the switch to the vent above the machine.

“What the hell, Kelley?” she wheezed.

“I am sorry,” he wheezed back. “It was instinct.”

“Do you have any idea yet what this stuff is supposed to do?” Rosemary asked, her breathing clearing a little.

Karl shook his head. “No.”

“Damn. Here's hoping I don't go into a berserker rage, then,” she muttered, turning to the machine and pressing a sequence of buttons that would vent the remaining steam safely into a chamber for further analysis.

Karl, meanwhile, found himself staring at the curve of her lower back as she worked. Fixating on it, really. It was barely visible through the thick plastic of the smock she was wearing, and he found himself wanting desperately to fit his hands to her hips, to press that smock close to her body so that he could see her curves.

He shook his head, trying to clear it, but the almost frantic impulse to touch Rosemary was still there.

So he indulged in the safest way he could.

Rosemary gave a little start as Dr. Kelley’s arm came down across her shoulders and he moved in close to her, watching the process as she vented steam. For the past minute or so, since shortly after they had encountered the cloud of steam, she had found herself painfully aware of his presence in the room near her… and even more painfully aware of the attraction to him that she'd noticed the day she had met him and had done her best to ignore ever since.

His hand rested just next to the join between her shoulder and neck, and she felt his thumb brush against the sliver of skin between her wig and her ascot. She was trying to decide if it had been a deliberate touch when it happened again.

“Dr. Kelley…” she began, turning a little to look at him and immediately forgetting what she'd been about to say, because there he was, close at her side, looking down at her with an expression halfway between tender regard and lust. Her mouth fell open at the sight and her breath started coming in shallow pants, and she stared back into his eyes, almost certain that the expression on her own face matched his.

Slowly, so slowly that she would have had more than ample time to tear herself away if she had wanted to, he lowered his mouth to hers, brushing his lips gently against her own at first. And then he caught her mouth in a kiss, all-encompassing, devouring, passionate, and Rosemary’s brain stopped working entirely as she kissed him back.

Before she quite knew what was happening they had started fumbling at each other’s clothing, almost ripping buttons away from their moorings in their eagerness to be skin to skin.

“ _Blyad,_ your body is fantastic,” Dr. Kelley said, pulling back to examine her as he worked the buttons of her blouse. As soon as her bra was exposed, he slid his fingers into one of the cups, finding her nipple, and Rosemary let out an appreciative little murmur at the sensation. The way he was touching her she thought she might very well actually be fantastic, for all that she was just a plain, fat Black woman well past her fiftieth birthday.

“Just to be clear,” she panted, staring at the erection that was tenting the front of his trousers as she worked the buckle of his belt, “We're fairly certain that Dr. Park was being cagy about the effects of this compound because it's an aphrodisiac, right?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Dr. Kelley murmured, leaning back in to kiss her neck as he got the remaining buttons of her blouse out of the way.

“And we're just doing this because we can't help it?”

Dr. Kelley had pushed her blouse off her shoulders at this point and was pulling her close to undo the zipper of her skirt. He let it drop to the ground, then stepped back to look at her standing there in her undergarments. “No one with the slightest interest in women could resist you if they found themselves in my current state,” he said fervently.

Rosemary grabbed him by the belt loop and pulled him back towards her with a little growl. “Good,” she said, before pulling his face down to hers so she could kiss him again, then sliding her hands down his bare chest—his shirt had followed his lab coat almost immediately—to finish ridding him of his pants and boxers.

She felt his hands just as busy on her own body, unfastening her bra, shoving her pantyhose and underwear down her hips, and then he was dropping to his knees in front of her, helping her step out of her heels a foot at a time, removing the pantyhose from her legs as she did.

It was an awkward angle, but he couldn’t seem to resist leaning in close and pressing his mouth to her cunt. His fingers slid up her inner thighs, parting the lips of her cunt, and his tongue darted out and found the hard and currently impossibly sensitive nubbin of her clit. The onset of menopause had left her with decreased sensitivity, but right now felt like a return to her horny forties, when all it had taken was a too-rough pair of cotton panties to set her off. The cautious rhythm he set with his tongue soon left her too breathless to make a sound as she came hard, her hands braced against his shoulders the only thing keeping her upright.

He stood and awkwardly levered his own feet out of their shoes around the bulk of his trousers, and then he took her by the hips, his fingers digging in—not painfully, just enough to let her know he wasn't planning to let go of her any time soon—and backed her towards one of the lab tables, helping her hop up on to a stool. And then he was between her thighs, his hard cock rubbing against her stomach as he leaned down and kissed her as if his life depended on it, his tongue salty with the taste of her cunt.

Rosemary moaned against the kiss, reaching down between them to reposition him, so that the next time he thrust his hips against her he plunged into her in one smooth stroke. Dr. Kelley broke the kiss, letting out a deep moan of his own as he let his head fall to her shoulder.

“Oh, Rosemary...” His voice was soft, as soft as the kisses he was pressing to her skin, and the longing in it left her aching. Was she really just a convenient body to him, only irresistible thanks to the compound that had them in its thrall? Or, somehow, some way, did he want her the way she wanted him?

He nuzzled against her, pressing little kisses to the sensitive parts of her neck, a gentleness betrayed as desperation by the jerky, uncontrolled thrust of his hips as he began to move in her. Rosemary clung to Dr. Kelley, panting as he fucked her hard, as he worked a hand between them and found her clit once more, rubbing it awkwardly for a moment until he found a rhythm that made her throw back her head and let out a little breathless shout of pleasure in short order, a second orgasm removing her ability to think about anything else but that delicious point of contact between them.

He only lasted a few more thrusts himself after her climax, and then he grunted and stiffened against her, half collapsing against her body, pressing her back against the lab table behind her. She wrapped her arms around him and held him close, both of their bodies sweaty and replete in the afterglow of a good, hard fuck.

They both seemed to come to their senses at the same moment, Rosemary pushing him away by the shoulders, Dr Kelley diving for a roll of paper towels to deal with the mess that had pooled between her thighs. She took a wad of the paper towels from him and worked at cleaning it up as he turned his back to her, no doubt trying to clean himself off as he scrambled for his boxers. He offered her undergarments up without looking her direction, and Rosemary took her bra and underpants and put them back on before slipping in to the plastic smock, which thankfully covered her neck to knees well enough to get her from here to a bathroom, where she would be able to pay more detailed attention to her toilette. Once fully covered, if somewhat precariously, she gathered up the rest of her clothing and slipped back into her heels.

“This… this never happened,” she said to Dr. Kelley.

He finished buttoning his shirt and glanced her way. “Absolutely not. It would have been an insane breach of protocol if it had.”

“Right. Exactly,” said Rosemary. “Now, if you don't mind, I'm going to step out and use the bathroom, and then we can get back to work?”

Dr. Kelley shook his head, avoiding her gaze as he did up the buttons of his lab coat, skipping over one that had obviously gone missing during those minutes when they'd been frantically undressing each other. “No, I, ah. Think I can carry out remaining tests alone,” he said. “You should return to office. Stifle all talk of revolution among the masses.”

“Right. Yes. That would be sensible,” Rosemary said. She turned away and took a few steps towards the door of the lab, then looked back at him. “Dr. Kelley? That thing that didn't happen?”

He looked up at her, his expression cautious, worried, tense, and Rosemary changed her mind about what she'd been about to say.

“I was saying yes, Dr. Kelley. The entire time through.”

His face relaxed, and before Rosemary could give in to the urge to discuss the fact that she would probably say yes even without the presence of an alien aphrodisiac in her system, she made a mad dash for the door of his lab and left him behind her.


	2. Chapter 2

A weekend later, and Karl entered his start-of-week check-in with Rosemary with equal parts caution and curiosity. He had not seen her all weekend, a strange occurrence given the fact that her apartment was right next to his in the complex on Goddard’s campus. He would usually have run into her in the laundry room at least once, but he had not seen her since that day last week when she had left his lab rosy-cheeked and wearing little more than a disposable plastic smock, which meant she had to have been deliberately avoiding him. But this could not be avoided, and he had no idea how she would react to having him in her office.

He had no idea how he would react to being there.

She seemed astonishingly normal when she called him into her office at his knock, clearly determined to maintain her usual air of distant professionalism. The only awkward moment was when he paused by the door, his hand on the knob, before she gave him a little nod and he shut the door behind him.

“You know how people like to eavesdrop in this place, Dr. Kelley. Better to give them no temptation.”

“Of course.” But there was no of course about it. She seemed calm, her face smooth, her focus on the file in front of her, but the sound of her low, raspy voice sent a shiver down his spine, tempting him, though not to eavesdrop. He sat down in one of the chairs in front of her desk and settled his hands on his knees, every movement feeling strange and out of place and awkward.

Rosemary’s attention was on the file open in front of her. “Have you pinned down the chemical configuration of that compound yet?”

So she was going straight to it. No detour through the current state of Decima to allow him a moment to adjust. “Not quite. There is… hrn.” He considered how to put it. “It seems to be… in flux. Reactions of gaseous state differ significantly from the reactions of solid.”

“I see.” She bit her lower lip. “Do you think you could synthesize it once you’ve locked down the composition?”

Karl gave Rosemary a sharp look. She was studying the contents of the file in front of her with a great deal of intensity in her gaze, a blush darkening her cheeks. “Perhaps,” he answered cautiously. “Forgive me if this is rude question, but… after what happened in lab, why would you wish to synthesize more of it?”

Her cheeks darkened further. “I...” And then her spine straightened and she met his eye, the blush slowly fading. “Well, I might as well be upfront with you. Menopause is a few years in the past for me now, and since then business has... slowed down. Down there.” Her eyes darted briefly in the direction of her lap. “Truth be told, I haven’t been able to rely on natural lubrication for almost a decade, and things are... well. Let’s just say they’re less sensitive than they used to be and leave it at that.”

There had been no problem with either lubrication or sensitivity the other day, on her part or on his. “I see,” Karl said slowly, debating how much to say on his own part. “Well. If we are making confessions...”

“I’ve seen the results of your physical,” Rosemary said, blushing once more. “And believe me, I’ve never met an impotent man who was quite so... enthusiastic.”

Karl felt his own face heat. “I have not had much sensation in that area for a very long time,” he said, calmer than he felt. “At least, not until yesterday. The nerve damage from my childhood is... extensive.”

“Good to know.” Rosemary cleared her throat. “I think it might be a good match for Goddard’s pharmaceutical line, if you can isolate the compound and replicate it.”

“I will need to do some more testing,” Karl said, watching Rosemary’s fingers as they closed around a pen, as she jotted a note, feeling a strange, erotic charge from the sight. What was wrong with him? “You would be welcome to sample the results,” he added, the words slipping out before he could think better of them.

Rosemary’s teeth dug into her lower lip once more as she considered, and Karl watched in riveted silence. He wanted to fling himself across her desk and kiss her senseless.

“That sort of thing is really only fun with a partner,” she said in a low, raspy voice, watching him cautiously through lowered lashes.

“I could provide that, too,” Karl said without a second thought, meeting her eye across the expanse of her desk.

Rosemary’s breathing hitched for a moment in her lungs before continuing unsteadily. She dropped the pen and pressed her palms to the surface of her desk, hard and then harder, her fingertips blanching as she briefly cut off blood flow. And then, before he could react, she was on her feet and around her desk, standing in front of his chair. One of her hands caught him by the chin and tilted his face back as she looked down at him with a question in her eyes.

Karl was too breathless to speak. He nodded his response to that unspoken question.

Suddenly her mouth was hot and hard against his, her fingers tracing up his jaw until she caught him by the back of his neck, pulling him deeper into the kiss as her tongue teased his lips apart.

Something was strange, and it took him several minutes to realize what it was, distracted as he was by Rosemary’s mouth on his.His cock was standing hard between his legs, an erection as firm and enthusiastic as the one he thought had been caused by the lungful of alien aphrodisiac he had inhaled the other day. But he had been particularly cautious with the samples of the compound since then. The only way it could be affecting him now was if... was if...

His mind was too overwhelmed to think that “if” through. His entire world was Rosemary, her lips against his, silky-rough slide of her tongue against his own. He reached for her, finding her hips without seeing them, sliding his hands down her thighs until he found the hemline of her tight skirt and was able to ruck it roughly up around her waist.

She did not protest. Instead she used her new freedom from the skirt’s constriction to straddle his legs, settling her warm weight in his lap and grinding against him. Karl squeezed one of his hands between them, pressing his fingers to her clit through pantyhose and underwear, and Rosemary broke the kiss in a groan.

“Get out of your pants,” she said urgently, getting back to her feet. Karl worked frantically at his belt buckle, only just managing to get his pants un-zipped and the buttons on them and the front of his boxers undone before Rosemary had finished shimmying out of her pantyhose and was on him again. She slid his cock free of his underwear and held it steady as she lowered herself back into his lap.

She was just as slick and tight around him as she had been the other day. Karl slid his hand between them again as she rode him frantically, her back arched and hands braced against the back of his chair. Her clit was hard beneath his fingertips, and he rubbed it in the firm little circles he had discovered that she liked the last time.

Her back arched harder and she let out a breathless shout, no longer riding against him as her cunt clenched hard around his cock. Karl grabbed her hips firmly and guided their motion himself, thrusting into her again and again, forcing himself into her tight passage until he came with a startled gasp of his own, spilling himself deep inside her hot cunt.

Rosemary slumped forward, her cheek against his shoulder, her lips against his neck. For a minute or two, all he could hear from her was harsh breathing. And then... “I don’t know _what_ the fuck that was,” she mumbled against his ear. “Other than so fantastic I kind of resent it.”

Karl laughed breathlessly. “It is possible we still have some amount of the compound in our systems,” he said, pressing his lips absentmindedly to her cheek.

“I’m not sure that’s the case,” Rosemary said, tracing a tantalizing line down his neck with her fingertip. “I may have, ah, tried to recreate the effect on my own time.”

He had tried several times himself since he had last seen her, putting his hand to a cock that refused to stay hard even with the image of Rosemary naked and wanton still glowing in his mind. “I did as well. And I...” he searched for the correct phrasing and settled on: “I came up wanting.”

“So did I.” She lifted her head from his shoulder and frowned down at him. “That’s... odd. Maybe not for you, but, ah, I can usually reach completion with a little work.”

“I will research further,” he promised her.

“And maybe we should keep our distance from one another for a few days,” she added, her face close to his once more, the tip of her nose brushing against his as she spoke.

Karl let out a grunt in the affirmative... and then seized her face in both hands, pulling her into into another open-mouthed kiss.

Rosemary knew she should put a stop to this. She was his manager, for god’s sake, even if the power differential between them couldn’t be so easily defined.

But it had been a couple of years since she’d last had a regular partner, and even longer than that since things had been so… so _good_ between her and another person. Some part of it had to be the flush of excitement that came from doing something that ought to be forbidden, even if Goddard Futuristics didn’t have any rules in place about relationships between employees. After all, it would have been almost impossible to enforce such rules in a company full of workaholics who didn’t have the time to date outside of the office.

And there was something endearing about his obvious enthusiasm. One of his hands was on the back of her neck now, holding her fast against him as he kissed her like his life depended on it, but the other… well, the other was tracing its slow and gentle way across her thigh, his fingers dipping into the dimples left by cellulite, tracing the stretch marks that networked her skin. There had been plenty of people over the years who found her plenty appealing when fully clothed only to balk when the clothing came off.

There was the feeling of something slipping between them, and Dr. Kelley broke the kiss and buried his face against her neck instead, letting out a low groan as he did. “Apologies. I think…”

“Yes, we should have gone for the tissue box some time ago, hm?” Rosemary said, trying to keep her train of thought on the humor of the situation. An easy way to avoid the thought that this shouldn’t— _couldn’t_ —happen again. Rosemary extracted herself from Dr. Kelley’s lap somewhat reluctantly, not helped at all by the way he clung to her for a moment before letting her go. There was a large wet spot on the front of his boxers and part of his trousers, and after she claimed some tissues for herself and handed the rest to him, he made an attempt at dabbing it clean.

“You keep a set of spare clothing in your lab in case of accidents, don’t you?” she asked.

He glanced up, his eyes wide and wild. “Yes.”

She claimed her underpants and pantyhose again, sitting in the chair next to his to shimmy back into the latter. “I’ll lock you up in here and run up there to get them for you. Where do you keep everything?”

“In office.” He avoided looking at her, still dabbing at the front of his trousers in a desultory manner. “Bottom drawer on left side of desk.”

“Back in a jiffy,” Rosemary said, getting to her feet and slipping back into her heels.

“Wait.” Dr. Kelley grabbed her arm, stopping her before she could get around him to the door. She looked curiously down at him. “Your lipstick,” he said in an urgent voice.

His own mouth bore traces of the bright red she’d adorned her lips with that morning. “Thank you.” She returned to her desk and pulled out a compact mirror and the tube she kept in her desk of her favorite color, taking a few moments to apply a fresh coat.

When she glanced up again, Dr. Kelley was staring at her mouth with an intensity that was alarming. “What?”

“Want to kiss it all off again,” he said gruffly. His cheeks flushed pink. “Forgive me. You do not want…” He trailed off, strangely subdued, and returned his attention to the wet stain on his trousers.

His subdued state left her feeling strangely desperate. “It’s not that I don’t want. It’s just that I _can’t._ ” She let out a despairing little laugh. “I’m your lab manager.”

His jaw tensed, and he squeezed his eyes shut. “I know. And I will come to accept it. But I have not…” He looked up at her suddenly, an expression of such despair on his face that she did not know what to do with it. “I have not _wanted_ for a very long time. It will take me time for my heart to understand the logic my mind accepts, you understand?”

Rosemary swallowed hard, a sudden lump in her throat. “I’ll go get you some clean clothing,” she said instead of responding to his words.

He nodded and did not try to stop her from leaving her office this time. When she returned with the spare set of clothing from his drawer, he took it from her and she took herself off to the bathroom, both to clean herself up a little better than she’d managed with the tissues and to give him time to change.

When she returned to her office, it was empty.

She tried not to mind that.


	3. Chapter 3

It had taken Karl the better part of a week—slotted in around his other work, it was true, but still the better part of a week—to put together something that he thought matched the chemical composition of the samples he had been given. Tests on rats certainly seemed to cause the same effect; a pair of rats, when exposed to the compound he had synthesized in any form, would immediately engage in frantic mating behavior regardless of the gender of their partner or, in the case of male rats, whether or not neutering had taken place. And they would begin again after a short rest period, even if he moved them to an enclosure where there were no samples of the compound at all, until either they became exhausted or, he thought more likely for the pairs that moved on to grooming each other cheerfully, until the compound had worn off enough that they could find other ways than sex to relieve that itch.

Or so previous tests had gone. He was now staring down into a tank where a pair of rats were stubbornly refusing to mate, despite the fact that he had watched both of them drink out of a water bottle laced with the compound he had synthesized.

“What is the matter, hm?” he asked conversationally as he scooped one of the rats out of the cage. “Did I get formula wrong this time? Or does it just become less effective over time?”

The rat squeaked her protest to being held, and Alexander sighed and headed back towards the row of individual cages these rats lived in, specimen in hand. He stopped, startled, when one of the other rats flung herself against the side of her cage as he passed it. The rat he held carefully in gloved hands began scrabbling towards that cage as well, scratching him through the latex gloves he wore.

“Was this your partner earlier this week, then?” he asked the rat. She of course, did not answer.

He had not tracked that. He had not thought to track it. He cracked open the cage the other rat was in and let the rat in his hands slip into it.

Ah. Not a female. One of the neutered males, then, he found himself thinking as the rat who had definitely not consumed any of the compound flung himself on his partner with a fervor that matched her own.

He left them to it and grabbed the rest of the cages one at a time, bringing them close to where the other rat who had consumed the compound this time around was sequestered. A male rat finally reacted, flinging himself towards his partner in the large cage through two layers of plexiglass while the male still in the large cage did the same.

Alexander dumped the rat from small cage into large and considered.

He went down the row of rats, pairing them off. It shouldn’t have been easy. The compound was no longer present in their systems; he had drawn blood from all of them this morning to check. But they still rushed to the sides of their cages to greet one another, still fell into frantic grooming behavior when he put one in the other’s cage.

Four rats had died from exhaustion during the first set of trials, and he was left with a pair of singletons. They had been listless and uninterested in the days since their partners has passed; he had expected they would die themselves in the days since the first round of tests. But they left him with an opportunity. He snagged the compound-laced water bottle from the large cage where the two male rats were still at it and put it in with one of the singletons before dumping the other single rat in there as well, and then waited.

They drank. They ate. They groomed one another listlessly.

They were not interested in more.

Interesting.

He separated the rats out again, making sure to put enough space between partners that they were not rushing the sides of their cages for one another.

He needed Rosemary. They had been avoiding one another again. He had heard her leave her apartment a time or two from within his own, had occasionally glanced out the windows of his lab to see her walking along one of the paths that lead away from the building, her brightly colored suits making her easy to spot.

No one dressed quite like Rosemary.

He needed her. The thought came again, and frantic this time. He needed to wrap his arms around her waist, to kiss her lipstick into nonexistence again.

No. He straightened himself out, dismissed that foolish thought. He needed her, but not for that. He needed to test a theory.

He went to his lab phone and called down to her office. His heart thumped when the phone was picked up almost immediately... and fell when the voice that answer him was Rosemary’s assistant.

“Miss Epps is in a meeting and isn’t to be disturbed,” Charles said when Karl put his query to the other man.

“Very well. Let her know I wish to see her when she has a moment?”

“Certainly.” And Charles would, though his crisp voice betrayed a certain disdain for Karl, and he hung up immediately.

Karl shook his head to clear it once more. This would give him more time to prepare. He was fairly certain of the tests that detected the presence of the compound, but what else would he need?

For the next little while, he forgot Rosemary entirely as he prepared for what was ahead.

Rosemary knocked cautiously on the door of Dr. Kelley’s lab before entering. She had called up to see what he wanted, but he hadn’t answered his lab phone, giving her no option but to check on him in person.

Oh, what a lie that was. Of course she had had other options. She could have sent Charles up to make sure Dr. Kelley hadn’t been overwhelmed by fumes, or she could have simply waited a few minutes and called him again. But she was curious, and curiosity was enough to bring her up three flights of stairs to his lab on the fifth floor.

But she was cautious, too, given the way her last few personal encounters had gone with the man, and that was what lead her to knocking.

She heard an answering call, and assumed he meant for her to come in. He was standing in the far corner of the lab from her, next to a counter, and he held his hand up as she entered and allowed the door to swing shut behind her.

“Please, wait there.”

“All right.” She could see the frown on his face from across the room. “Something wrong?”

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.” He tilted his head to one side and studied her. “Do you… feel anything?”

She raised an eyebrow. “Well, it’s a little chilly in here, and I’ve got a blister on my left heel…”

He made a face at her. “You know what I meant.”

Rosemary shook her head. “Nothing from here.”

He nodded and took a step closer to her. “And now?”

She shook her head again, and he took another step, and then two more. A warm flush flooded her body, and she suddenly wanted to go to him and bury her face against his neck. “Oh, I feel that.”

A pale pink blush had spread across his own cheeks. “As do I.” He stepped back to the counter and the feeling faded. “You see the materials on the table in front of you?”

“Let me guess. You want to test the concentration?”

He nodded. “You will need saliva, and a drop of blood.” He stayed next to the counter, his fingers clutched around the edge of the counter top, as he walked her through the tests.

The reagents did not react at all.

“I’m assuming this means…?”

“That the compound is no longer present in your system in detectable amounts? Yes.”

“That can’t be right.” Rosemary frowned. “Should I redo them? Maybe I missed one of the steps…”

“I was watching you. You did everything perfectly.”

“You can’t tell that from here.”

Dr. Kelley took a few steps closer, and that warm flush flooded through her again. “Should I observe from your shoulder?”

“No thank you,” she said breathlessly.

He retreated again. “I also tested negative.”

“All right.” She eyed him cautiously from across the room. “You sound like you have a theory.”

“Would like to test one more thing,” he said, his voice very low and his Russian accent very strong. “You should prepare to leave the room.”

Rosemary took a step back from the table and put her hand on the doorknob, and Dr. Kelley plucked a test tube out of a rack on the counter and downed the contents in one swift gulp.

She opened her mouth to ask what that had been about when she felt it: a hot rush of lust, overwhelming her senses. She clung to the doorknob, barely able to keep herself upright. “My god.”

Dr. Kelley was clinging just as hard to the edge of the counter now, and she could see his pupils darken when he looked her way, even from across the room. “You should go now, I think,” he growled at her.

“I know.” But Rosemary couldn’t bring herself to turn the doorknob.

“You need to leave, right now,” he said, wrenching himself away from the counter.

“I’m not certain I can,” Rosemary breathed, and suddenly he was on her, pushing her hard against the door as his mouth came down on hers, as his hands went to her hips and pulled her hard against him, his erection standing firm against her stomach. And then came the mad scramble to remove enough clothing for him to get between her thighs, fast and frantic. Rosemary heard her skirt rip and then her pantyhose and couldn’t bring herself to care, because an instant later he was inside her, one of her legs hooked up around his hips as he fucked her hard against the door, an awkward position for both of them that neither of them seemed to care enough about the awkwardness of enough to change.

They collapsed to the floor just inside the door when they were done, his knees buckling first, followed quickly by hers. And then they sat there, panting hard, Rosemary half-sprawled across Dr. Kelley’s lap as she tried to wrangle her thoughts into some coherent form.

“I take it that was meant to test whether or not that compound of yours formed some kind of bond between us,” she said breathlessly.

“Mm,” he agreed, his face warm against her neck. “Seems to have done so with the rats. Wanted to check.” He nuzzled absent-mindedly against her. “You smell fantastic.”

Rosemary laughed. “Awful man. You could have warned me.”

“Did not want to corrupt data.”

“Awful man,” she said again, before pressing a kiss to the side of his head. “So, what, we just keep doing this whenever we’re in the same room?”

“Effect seems to diminish somewhat over time,” he said, pressing a kiss to her throat. “With luck, in week or two, all we will want to do is cuddle.”

“That’s still awfully inconvenient,” Rosemary muttered.

She felt Dr. Kelley’s lips twitch into a smile where they were pressed against her. “You certainly make it difficult to resist.”

Rosemary slid her hands to his shoulders and pushed him back from her so she could meet his eye. He gave her a somewhat dazed look in return. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He simply studied her, with a strange, subdued look on his face that she recognized from the other day. And then he sighed. “What does it matter? You have said that you cannot.”

Oh, that hurt. “Darling, I…”

“Dr. Kelley,” he corrected, turning his head away, stiff and correct for all that she was still sitting on his lap. “It is what you have always called me. Do not change now because of this.”

Rosemary looked away awkwardly and reached behind her, grabbing on to the doorknob and using it to haul herself to her feet. She smoothed her skirt back down over her thighs, finding the place where the back seam had ripped and being grateful that it didn’t expose much more than a little more thigh than the slit in it already had. She would still need to go back to her apartment and change, but it would do for now.

She kept her gaze on the far side of the lab as she did her best to straighten everything out, though her blouse was missing three buttons and her suit jacket two. Still, she did the best she could with what she had, and refused to look down at Dr. Kelley as she did it.

He got to his feet and she turned her back on him immediately, not able to bear the look on his face. From behind her, she heard him sigh, but he didn’t say anything.

“You’re decent enough for me to open the door?” she asked.

“Yes,” came his quiet response.

“How long until this gets down to a manageable level?”

A low hum as he considered, a noise that sent a shiver down her spine. “We should test it in a week.”

“We’ll do this coming Monday’s briefing over the phone, then.”

“That would be for the best.” His voice sounded tight in his throat as he said those words, and some part of her wanted to whirl around and bury her face against his chest and tell him that of course she hadn’t meant it, of course they could make this work somehow, of course she wanted him.

But this was Goddard Futuristics, and declaring her heart like that was too dangerous to be contemplated in this place, so instead she left him behind in that lab of his, determined to hide the deep ache that filled her chest from the world.


	4. Chapter 4

They managed to avoid one another for the rest of the work week, a minor miracle for two people who worked in the same section of the lab building and who had apartment doors that were, at most, fifteen feet apart. It helped that Karl seemed to be preternaturally aware of her presence when she was near him; it made it simple to wait until she had left for her office before he left his own apartment, made it simple to wait until she had left the lab building before venturing forth himself. 

But it was not exactly _easy_. In fact, the situation was doing its best to drive Karl mad.

He knew that, for all that the wall between their apartments was a thin, shoddy construction, it was not so thin that he should be able to smell her from his side of it. But if he had been asked, he would have sworn that he was able to, that the scent of jojoba oil and lavender soap and the musky warmth of Rosemary herself permeated the wall between their bedrooms. And then he remembered his rats and the way they had scrabbled their way up against the sides of their cages, looking for their partners, and he was not entirely certain any more that he could not be smelling her.

He felt like pressing himself to that wall every time he was in his bedroom.

He slept on his couch instead of in his bed. It was more bearable from there, that lodestone pull towards Rosemary. It was easier to ignore.

He wished he did not have to ignore it.

He should not have taken that dose of the compound. It had been purer, more refined than the cloud of mist he and Rosemary had been caught in, and he really had no way of telling whether or not it would wear off as quickly as it had for the rats. If he hadn’t taken that dose, he could be looking forward to seeing Rosemary in person in a few short days, instead of facing down a week or more without even a glimpse of her face.

Before this had happened, it had not occurred to him that he wanted her. Oh, he had acknowledged that she was an attractive woman—startlingly so, and he was not a man who usually noticed women—but it had been a clinical, detached sort of acknowledgement. And he had known that he liked her. But wanting her? What would have been the use of that? What would have been the use of wanting something he could never have?

What was the use of it now? There was nothing useful about it. It only left him pacing his apartment as if it were a cage, left him itching beneath the skin, left him wishing that there were anything about him that would make him worth wanting in return. But what did he have to offer a woman like her? His mind? She could think circles around him on a bad day. His body?

Karl examined one bony wrist with a critical eye, compared the mental image of his naked body as last seen through a cloud of steam in his bathroom mirror, to Rosemary’s lush curves. Definitely not worth her time. No wonder she rejected him each time she came back to her senses. He could offer her nothing that she might possibly want.

He needed to leave his apartment. He needed to walk, as far and as fast as he could, to escape these thoughts.

He realized too late, when he opened his door to find Rosemary just passing by his door on the way to her apartment, bag of groceries in hand, that his mind must have found a way to trick him into encountering her.

She had been very close to his front door. His hand darted out and grabbed her, or she veered even further to end up in his arms, or some combination of the two. He was not sure which it was, but somehow, in an instant, she had been whirled around to inside his apartment and was now clasped close and tight against his chest, his body between her and escape.

“Rosemary?” he asked breathlessly, bending over her, nose to nose.

She dropped her bag of groceries in his front hall and reached past him to push the front door shut, then pushed him back against it. Her arms went up around his neck and pulled him down to her, her mouth hot and wild against his as the weight of her body pinned him in place. He would never have been able to resist, even if he had been in his right mind. As it was, he did not even try. Not with her body here in his arms and desperate against his.

She broke the kiss to let out a low pant of breath. “Think we can make it to your bed?”

The thought of her in his bed was almost too much. “Quickly,” he panted back, pushing at her shoulders.

They made a frantic dash to his bedroom. Rosemary somehow managed to strip herself of jacket and blouse along the way, must have discarded her heels in his front hall. Karl found himself rushing to catch up, had only managed to get to the point of unbuttoning his trousers when a completely naked Rosemary tugged him onto the bed.

“Just a moment,” he said, shoving his trousers and boxers roughly down his hips.

“Now,” she demanded, pulling him over her.

All it took to enter her was a single thrust, and then she was wet and hot and perfect around him. Karl groaned and buried his face against her neck as he began thrusting, short, jerky thrusts meant to find his climax as quickly as possible. He felt her work her hand between them, felt her rubbing her clit in tight little circles until she came, until her cunt spasmed around him, so hard and tight it almost forced him out of her. He braced himself against her, let the tight spasms of her orgasm carry him over the edge as well.

He lay there on top of her, panting for breath, smiled when her arms came around him and held him to her. Even if she was about to reject him again, he could find a moment of tenderness here, and he would keep it close when she was gone again.

“I wonder,” she said in low, considering tone of voice, her lips pressed to the side of his scalp as she spoke, “if this would wear off faster if we just fucked it out of our systems.”

Dr. Kelley let out a startled snort of laughter at that suggestion, and Rosemary smacked him lightly on the shoulder. “I was being serious. What if we just had sex once or twice a day until it wears off? It’s not like it would have to mean anything.”

He grew stiff and distant in her arms, and a moment later pushed his way off her body and fell to the mattress at her side. No doubt that this would leave a mess on his covers, but there was nothing to be done about that. “This truly means nothing to you?”

“The sex?” She turned her head towards him so that she could study his face and lied as best as she was able. “I don’t need to feel a damn thing for someone in order to enjoy having sex with them.” And that was the truth, though not when it came to him. With him... she almost sighed, thinking of it. With him she wanted more, in a way she had not in a very, very long time.

“I see,” was all he said, but even from his profile she could tell that the corners of his mouth twitched deeper into their customary frown, that little wrinkles of distress had gathered between his nonexistent eyebrows. She wanted to kiss that expression off his face, but she couldn’t and she shouldn’t, not if she planned to get out of this tangle with her heart intact.

“I’ve been enjoying it, if that helps.”

He sighed. “No, it does not.” He shut his eyes. “You should go back to your apartment. Take care of your groceries.”

“Probably broke half the eggs flinging them down like that.” Rosemary looked down at her hands, still folded across her stomach, and confessed what was really on her mind. “I don’t want to leave.”

“What do you want from me, Rosemary?” He sounded tired—exhausted and strangely sad—and she looked back at him to find that he had turned his frown on her.

“I don’t know.” And she couldn’t face him any more, not with that look on his face. The far corner of his bedroom ceiling was a much more agreeable sight. “I think it’s just nice to be wanted,” she confessed. Confess to that, and she wouldn’t have to confess to actually liking the man.

She heard him sigh. “I suppose it is.”

“Can’t we just… want each other for a little while?” She kept her gaze fixed on that corner of his bedroom ceiling, forcing away the tears that kept wanting to bead at the corners of her eyes by sheer force of will. “It doesn’t have to mean anything.”

“I do not know if I am capable of doing that,” he responded in a low rumble.

“Surely you’ve had a fling or two in your time.”

“Impotent, remember?” She glanced back at him and he quirked an eyebrow up at her, as effective a chiding as his words had been. “It makes most things difficult,” he added.

“Sorry.”

“It has been a fact of my life for some time.” And his voice was dry and sarcastic in a way she hated hearing directed at her.

Rosemary swallowed hard. “You’re right. I should go.” She pushed herself upright and winced as the backs of her thighs impacted on the wet spot left beneath her on his blanket.

“Something wrong?” Dr. Kelley’s hand touched her arm, a comforting brush of warm fingers.

“We just left a mess.” She clenched her thighs together as she rolled off his bed, trying to keep things from dripping further. “I’m going to go use your bathroom.”

“Of course.”

Rosemary scooted past the discarded bag of groceries in his front hall and into the bathroom, where she did the best she could to clean herself up with toilet paper.

There was a brief knock at the bathroom door when she was almost done. She opened it to find that Dr. Kelley had folded up her skirt and blouse and had left them outside the door of the bathroom and suddenly she was so damn angry she couldn’t breathe. She snatched up the folded clothing and stormed back into his bedroom, flinging the door open so hard it bounced off the wall and she had to catch it in her hand.

“You know what? Fuck you,” she snarled at him, throwing her clothing at his feet.

He looked up, clearly startled, from where he was sitting on the edge of the bed, dabbing at the wet spot they had left with a tissue. “Pardon?”

“You heard me. Fuck you.”

He glared at her. “You are the one who keeps turning me down. You are the one who keeps telling me you do not want this. And it is me you are angry at for respecting your boundaries?”

“What the fuck have I even had to turn down, hm? You keep fucking hinting and dancing around the subject but—”

“But what?” he snarled, sounding just as furious as she was. “I have said that I want you. I have said you make it hard for me to resist you. What more do you want?”

“Maybe for you to say you like me.” Her voice broke. “God damn you. All I want to know is if it’s just about… about this—” she gestured violently down at her body “—or if you’re actually interested in me for me.” She let out a harsh laugh and buried her face in her hands before she could start crying.

“And would that matter? When you are, as you keep saying, my manager?” His voice was just as hoarse as hers had become, and it sounded as if he had gotten to his feet and had taken a step or two closer to her.

“I don’t know. I don’t know.” She was crying anyway, and she swiped the tears angrily off her cheeks. “I think it might.”

“I like you,” he said quietly, his voice very close now. “You are a terrible woman.” His hands settled cautiously against her upper arms. “And I like you very much.”

Rosemary lowered her hands to find Dr. Kelley—Karl—Dmitri was looking down at her, very close and intent. “Good. Because I like you too,” she said, suppressing a sob. “Way more than I should.”

“And how much is that?” he asked, in a small, wondering tone.

But she was sobbing now, well and truly sobbing, and completely beyond answering him. Dmitri let out a cluck of concern and left her for a moment, only to reappear with a handkerchief in hand.

“Come here,” he said, tucking her against his side and dabbing gently at her cheeks with the handkerchief. All of a sudden, Rosemary was struck by how ridiculous this situation was. Here she was, completely naked, standing in the middle of her subordinate’s bedroom as she sobbed her eyes out and he fussed over her. A sob turned into a snort, and then another, until she was doubled over, wheezing with laughter.

Dmitri did not seem to know how to react. He patted her back cautiously and offered the handkerchief up, dangling it near her face, and Rosemary took it gratefully. She wiped away the tears that were still streaming down her face and blew her nose and slowly, as she did, the hysterical laughter turned into giggles turned into deep breaths forced into lungs that were now exhausted. Dmitri’s hand was still on her back, rubbing up and down her spine.

“You are all right?” he asked when she finally straightened up.

“Enough to have wanted you before all of this.”

“Sorry?”

“That’s how much I like you. Enough to have wanted you before we got hit by an alien aphrodisiac.”

“Ah.” He looked confused and a little distressed by this apparent revelation. “Why?”

Rosemary laughed weakly. “Oh, darling. Really?”

“What do I have to offer you that you could not get elsewhere?” He was looking intently at her face now, a deep frown digging furrows at the corners of his mouth and between his nonexistent eyebrows. “I know you have a partner—“

“You must have heard me with Al,” she interjected. “We’re friends. Nothing serious happening there.”

“And how do I compare to him, hm?” Dmitri looked away, clearly uncomfortable, though with what she didn’t know.

“There’s no reason to compare you to him.”

“No?” He shot her a sharp, disbelieving look. “I have seen that man, Rosemary. And I have heard more than a few rumors.”

“Have you tried to have a conversation with him? Damn man’s a pain in the ass to try and get a straight answer out of, and he tries, but he’s not a scientist.” She side-stepped closer to him and leaned her head against his shoulder. “A massive cock isn’t enough to make up for incompatibility in other ways. I’d much rather spend my spare time with someone who doesn’t look at me like I’ve got two heads when I go on a tear about someone’s research.”

Dmitri turned his head and pressed an absentminded kiss to her forehead. “Sometimes I do not understand what you are talking about either,” he confessed as he wrapped his arm around her waist and tugged her close.

“I want you because it’s _you_ ,” she said quietly. “Because… because I can talk to you. Because I like you. And yeah, also because the sex has been really good, but that’s an afterthought, darling.”

“I see.” His voice was too quiet for her to make out his mood in it. A pity. She wanted to know.

“And I don’t know if we can make this work, because this sort of thing never lasts here,” she added, not wanting to get his hopes up too high, if his hopes had risen at all. But the truth was she hadn’t been able to have a serious relationship since she had started working for Goddard Futuristics. Not that she’d been the sort to seek such a relationship out before then, but that had been a choice, not the lack of choices that had faced her these recent years.

Dmitri leaned his head against the side of hers, no doubt crushing her wig even more than it had already been. “But you would be willing to try?” And there it was, a small sliver of hope in his voice.

“As long as you are.”

“Good.” And then he dropped his face to her shoulder instead, and pressed a hot kiss to her skin. “Do you think we could try having sex in the bed once more? A little more slowly this time?”

His voice was suddenly so eager that it made her laugh, and a glance at his groin revealed the return of his erection.

She smiled. “I think I could manage it.”


End file.
